MediaSpace Wiki

Organizational Spr2006 Sess24

Announcement

It appears likely that I will be cancelling class next Friday. Just a heads up at this point. More details on Monday.

Index Card Assignment due today

List three sources that provide information that will be useful on the second short paper. Get as close to APA format as you can manage.

Taylor's Extention of Giddens (continued)

• Taylor et al are suggesting a modification of Giddens' structuration theory
  • Communication is the primary modality of structuration
  • Let's add "relationships" to that, but in doing lets note that:
    • Relationships are themselves a structure
    • Communication is the fundamental building block of relationships

• Key elements of communication that matter in this discussion:
  • Conversation
  • Text
  • Relationships
  • Agency
  • Practice

• Let's dive in
• An organization is a special kind of object
  • Not substantial ... a construct of imagination
  • But with substantial representations
• Organizations are represented by
  • A set of conversations
    • A contest of influence
    • A conversation of conversations
  • A set of relationships that emerge in the pattern of those conversations
    • A dance of agency
    • Of head-complement relationships in which people "act-for" others
    • An actor of actors
  • A text
    • A text of texts
    • A collection of practices
      • Frames
      • Retained

• A fractal structure which repeats at finer degrees of scale:
• A community
  • A set of conversations
  • A set of texts
  • A set of narratives

• Last time we talked about organizations a communities
  • as systems and cultures in which the culture emerges form the system
  • in particular, we talked about:
    • conversation
    • text
    • relationships
    • agency
    • practice
    • community
  • and how each emerges in layers within an organization
• This time I want to look computer-based communication media can be affected by this
  • Lets start, however, by looking at some some dialectics of organizations
    • Professional versus Administrative imperatives
      • skill versus control
      • expertise versus framework
      • professional ethics versus administrative success
    • Process versus Function Imperatives
      • one persons process is another's embedded function
    • Local versus Global imperatives
      • standardization versus flexibility
      • infrastructure versus work
    • discipline and control versus conversations (Suchman/Winograd)
• The Controller debate
  • software that structured interaction
    • obtaining commitments
    • managing schedule
  • an implementation of speech act theory
    • categorizing interaction
    • and, Suchman argues, restricting human interaction
    • Winograd counters that it is nothing but an accounting tool
  • In general, text categorizes and assigns intention to an agent
    • Here, software did the same thing, but with nothing but the vocabulary and syntax of a message (and the message it replies to) to draw on
      • The biggest problem with this software probably wasn't that it dehumanized anyone ...
      • it simply made mistakes.
• I have parallel experience in designing and building this kind of software
  • Automated reviewing software agent
    • categorized things based on "threat level"
      • who
      • where
      • what said (vocabulary-based)
    • enabled a set of actions
      • notes
      • post-deletion
      • preview of where or who
    • advantages
      • mostly invisible to people
      • radical improvements in productivity
      • really worked
      • because people made the final decisions, people made any mistakes that mattered
    • disadvantages
      • forced a particular way of dealing with reviewing and problems
      • a programmed "box"
  • electronic help desk software
    • based on analysis of vocabulary, syntax, and other message features
      • automatically identified
        • questions
        • potential answers to questions
        • follow up questions
        • final answers
      • tracked question resolutions
      • established "preferred" answers
      • kept statistics
    • brought several places where questions were asked together under one interface
    • provided a path for promoting answers to FAQs
    • advantages
      • substantial improvements in productivity and statistics
      • overall quicker answers
      • only one user interface to learn
    • disadvantages
      • rapidly evolving technologies made the system in continuous flux
      • management support generally orients to solving problems rather than maintaining solutions
        • once I've saved the money the project becomes another place to save money
        • a problem when technology is in flux
        • restricted ability to use specialized features of some systems

• There is a cyclical process of development associated with workplace technologies

Index Card Assignment Due Next Time

Think about a leadership experience you have had in a group or organization. Describe the experience. What kind of leadership did you exert? Note that there are many ways in which we can exert leadership.